It Is Very Quiet In His Little World (About our New Deaf Kitten) [View all]

[DonRedwood]

We've been talking about a kitten for quite a while. We have a giant Moose Dog (85lbs) who was raised by our 14 year old Burmese. The Moose Dog is very sweet but the Burmese is getting just too old for those dog & cat wrasslin' matches. Somedays now, after they've been playing for a while, the Burmese will wobble away, his legs kind of rubbery underneath him.

So, we had been talking about a kitten.

Saturday we found the tiniest little runt of a kitten at the Farm store. The little fellow was pure white and cute as anything. We wanted a girl cat but this little guy just seemed like the cat that was for us.

We brought him home and any worries about the Moose being too too rough were pretty much put to rest immediately. She adopted the little pipsqueak the moment she laid eyes on him. He hasn't gone five minutes without a bath since we got him. He's been licked, carried, snuffled and followed like a shadow since the minute we brought him in the door.

We are pet people. Our pets have toys and treats and each one of them has a goofy song and half a dozen pet names. I was once told by a mystic-sort-of-fellow, "You don't talk to your animals as if they were animals. I'm pretty sure your dog thinks she is a human." So we started trying out new names, singing little kitty songs, calling the kitty to us. But something was off. He's affectionate, sweet, playful and, we realized, stone deaf.

You can clap your hands as loud as you can six inches behind him and he doesn't hear a thing.

So while we thought we would be making up a name and cat songs, we've been going through our dog commands to see what hand signals we already use. We got a laser pointer and we are reading up on how to raise a deaf kitty. I'm a special ed teacher. I can figure this out.

But I will admit that we are kind of sad for him. We have a garden that is a wonderland but a corner lot that has corner traffic. Our house is situated between three parks so every few minutes there is another big dog on (or off) a leash trotting on our sidewalk. We worry about our cat that can hear. So this little guy, sadly, gets an indoor life. He won't hear his cute little names or the goofy little song I will probably make up about him. (though he likes to lay on my neck while I hum). I'm sad that he won't hear me talk to him like he is a human.

But my partner summed it up nicely. Our pets, in the past, have kind of picked us. The puppy at the pound who waddled over and fell asleep on my shoe (we buried her as an old grey dog three years ago on New Year's Eve) or the little orange cat at the pound who laid on his back, stuck his arms out of the wire cage, and mewed happily at us as though he'd just found his long-lost human family. This new fellow? "Fate gave us this little guy, he needs us," is how my partner put it. And we love him like crazy already. It never crossed our minds to take him back or not keep him.

And the Moose? She's adopted him. The baby crawls on her head, her back, looks for some milk which means at any time the kitten is trying to nurse on the dog's leg, or her ear, or her snout. If the kitty mews the dog is there in seconds.

It is very quiet in his little world but I think he's going to be OK.

(and just so you all don't worry...my partner is driving out to the farmstore today to check to see if the other white kittens are deaf. We're afraid the farmstore won't be as compassionate as we are. We are going to offer to foster the deaf kittens and find them a home if the farmstore doesn't want them.)